Guest columnist Mariel E. Addis: What can we do?
Published: 01-23-2025 11:37 PM |
I have written many essays in the Gazette about my transgender journey since my first piece back in October 2018. Back then, I was writing about the referendum on the November 2018 ballot in Massachusetts to throw out the Transgender Rights Bill that Gov. Charlie Baker had signed into law in 2016. When the votes were tallied after the November 2018 statewide election, nearly two-thirds of all Massachusetts voters opted to keep the law, which fought discrimination and supported the transgender and gender nonconforming community. As a then “new” transgender woman, it was extremely validating.
Now, in 2025, we have undoubtedly the most cruel, dishonest, and hateful individual to ever assume the role of president of the United States taking the oath of office for the second time. It is an event that should not be taking place, but Donald Trump made sure to grease the skids during his first presidency, thwarting the U.S. Justice Department’s efforts to bring him to justice for crimes most sensible and informed Americans know full well he committed.
To divert attention away from his troubles and detractors, Trump has focused his ire on Democrats, journalists, colleges, immigrants, outspoken women and others, stating he will jail them. Transgender and gender nonconforming people are also on Trump’s list; those he plans to “eliminate,” under what exact method it is unclear.
Now, I don’t scare easy. I have worked as an inpatient mental health counselor for nearly five years and dealt with some potentially very dangerous patients, people who could do me some serious physical harm. Still, Trump’s words scare me more because there is no way to prepare for such an unknown, open-ended threat.
Anyone who has taken a psychology course is no doubt familiar with Maslow’s “Heirarchy of Needs,” a pyramid with our most basic human needs such as food and shelter on the bottom, moving up four layers to the fifth at the top of the pyramid, which Maslow terms “Self Actualization,” a level where I guess you could say we “come into our own.” I would have to say that my transition to female, allowing me to be my authentic self, truly allowed me to get to that place — an incredible feeling.
And yet, now that I’ve reached that place, the Trump administration seems to want to pull the bottom layers of the pyramid, “Physiological Needs” and “Safety and Security,” out from under me and gender-diverse people like me. Having lived through 9/11 and seeing the photos and video coverage from that awful day so many times, I visualize the hateful new administration aiming fuel-laden planes into my personal “Heirarchy of Needs” pyramid with the goal of bringing me down with it.
How do transgender people like me prepare for this? There is already much of the country I don’t dare travel to for my own safety and, were I to leave the country on vacation, would I be allowed back in? While I feel safe in this community, could agents of the federal government overwhelm those here pledging to keep me safe? Should I apply for asylum in Canada or another country or should I find a little cabin off the grid somewhere and hide out until this ordeal is over?
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I know other transgender and gender-diverse people, and parents of transgender and gender-diverse children are feeling the same way. The thing of it is, we are not a threat to this country, no matter what extreme right Republican leaders and conservative Christians say.
It is my hope that knowing Trump’s disorganization, and the ongoing infighting between the Republican Party’s populist MAGA base and the wealthy robber barons that Trump is giving carte blanche to, perhaps there is no need to worry. Trans folks are only a tiny sliver of the population, and yet, that makes it all the easier to target us.
Luckily, with the laws being written to limit us, more and more people are coming to understand that we are not the problem. We are just good, loving people caught in a nasty web of lies and misunderstanding.
Mariel E. Addis is a native of Florence. She left the area for 16 years but returned in 2013.